The Problem

Nearly every person who reads this website has been touched in some way by addiction. Whether it’s through personal experience, or that of a family member or a friend – the opioid epidemic has hit people all across our state.

Every day, four North Carolinians die from a medication or drug overdose. Since 1999 the number of drug poisoning deaths in North Carolina has increased by 440%, from 363 to 1,965 in 2016. Beyond the painful human cost, the economic impact of the problem is staggering. The President's Council of Economic Advisors estimated the economic cost of the opioid crisis was more than $500 billion dollars in 2015.

While the death toll is horrifying, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. For every overdose death in North Carolina, there were 16 emergency department visits to treat non-fatal overdoses. Hundreds of thousands of people across our state are struggling with addiction.

Despite this crisis, over-prescription continues to be a huge issue in North Carolina. There is a prescription written for nearly every North Carolinian each year on average. In 2016, prescribers wrote prescriptions for more than 705 million opioid pills in North Carolina.